Waves Bring You Home
by Petrichor in May
Summary: SI OC. Or, in which a girl with red hair and a burden on her shoulders finds her place in this strange, terrible, beautiful new world. The legacy of a clan shattered and carried off by the tide to wherever they might find shelter is a terrible weight for a child to bear. But somehow, these fickle waves of fate might just lead you back home.
1. so hold my hand, i'll walk with you

_(31/5/__14__)AN: *laughs extremely nervously* I reeeally should be working on Rising Sun, but the plotbunnies attacked and took over my brain. I'm so sorry. This fic is presented in a drabble-style format, which is more fun for me and allows me to insert cute anecdotes amidst angst and melancholy. This wasn't meant to be so sad._

_(23/5/15) AN: WELCOME TO THE REVISED EDITION AHAHA! Added drabble no. 3, Trial and Error, and revised some minor issues. IT'S NOT DEAD YET, GUYS._

* * *

_-o-_

_-0. prologue_

_Hypothetically, let's say there was a girl. A girl, who grew up in a modern world, with electrical conveniences and media corporations and the whole wide world waiting for her. A young girl, with friends and family and the glow of youth around her._

_Hypothetically, let's say she died._

_And then she found herself waking up in another world, one she'd only seen in cartoons and comics, where assassins took the stage, as a child with fire-red hair and the legacy of a dead clan on her back._

_-o-_

* * *

**-i. heritage**

Her mother is a woman with warm brown eyes and long, long black locks that she ties into braids, weaved with all of the skill that she uses in her art. With her ink-stained pale fingers she takes her brushes and makes smooth strokes on scroll paper, writing words of power, drawing circles of words.

Manami has spent hours watching her kind, gentle mother make weapons out of flimsy paper and dripping ink. A single explosive tag can blow a man's head off in a second with a splatter of blood; behind her mother's warm brown eyes lies cold, war-hardened, battle-tested steel. Those same hands take her own and press the wooden body of an adult-sized brush into child-sized hands; help her dip the horsehair tip into black ink and trace the characters of her name across faded white; _Ma-na-mi._

Her mother gives her the brush, too large for her little fingers to properly wrap around, and tells her it's a promise that she'll grow into them. Manami has a lot of things she needs to grow into.

Her father is a man with a scar stretching across the smooth sloping ridges of his torso; he's shrugged off his shirt many a time to let her touch it, fascinated with the grooves worn by blades and weapons. There is a forge in the back of their little house; when okaa-san is out Manami watches her father sweep his sweat-dripping red hair out of his face with a hairband and put his scarred hands to work molding molten steel into weaponry. He carves seals into the blades when they're ready.

He teaches his daughter his art as well; slides thick gloves onto her soft hands to keep them safe and lets her help him pour liquid metal into moulds and write words into their cooling bodies.

Manami's father is a man with red hair and blue eyes. The eyes are insignificant in the face of what the locks of crimson imply for her heritage, with her own rust-red shock of hair. She's always been an honest girl, so she doesn't lie to herself when she sees this and realises the heavy burden of the remnants of a shattered clan from the surf. The burden on her shoulders now.

It's such a terrible secret for a child to bear, but for all of her years of life in this world she's never been a child.

For Manami's fourth birthday, she gets a set of calligraphy brushes of her own from her mother, fine-tipped and finely made; she receives a sheathed tanto from her father, engraved with intricate patterns and the archaic characters of her name carved into the grip.

_うずまき愛海. U-zu-ma-ki Ma-nami_. The first time her mother taught her words, it was her name, written big and shown to a wide-eyed little one-year old. _Look here,_ mother said, smiling at her, _the first character means love, and the second means ocean. You were born out of our love, on an island in the middle of the wide open sea, and within you there is a vast ocean of love, just waiting to find someone worthy of it. That's the history of your name, Manami. Remember it._

She hugs them both tight with her scrawny arms, barely able to fit a quarter of both of them into her hold. She's a child of Uzushio, and more importantly, the daughter of Yamamoto Chie and Uzumaki Katashi.

Manami has a lot of growing up to do.

* * *

**-ii. little green town**

Outside the little two-storey house that her parents have, there is a bustling town. Midoritani is settled in between rolling hills of green grass and verdant forest, a port of trade between Hi no Kuni and Tsuchi no Kuni. Travellers often pass through, usually merchantfolk, bringing with them caravans of liveliness and intrigue, bearing goods from faraway places.

Sometimes there will come salesmen with the colours of the ocean in their clothes and manners; from them, okaa-san buys books and scrolls, metal cutlery and utensils, and little bottles of water that smell like the sea. Tou-san rarely ventures outside because his hair is too noticeable and he hates to mask the pride he wears on his head, and so they compromise. (His workshop always carries a scent of saltiness on the air that matches poorly with their landlocked position.) Katashi, steelworker that he is, is often commissioned by the shop owners and townspeople to create metal objects, cutlery and furniture and weapons alike, and he has the privilege of working from home. Chie's job, on the other hand, has her working as a shop assistant at the general store, and she is well acquainted with the other people of the town.

Manami has no qualms about adding black into her hair to hide her roots, even if it pains her father to see her so. Mother whacks him upside the head and tells him growing children need sunlight and to meet new people. For all of his strength, Chie can make her husband give way with a few choice words. It's one of her many skills that Manami desires to learn.

Manami loves the village, loves the people who smile at the little girl who looks so much like her demure mother, even acts like her! The grandmothers coo over such a well-behaved child; the uncles pat her on the head and sneak her sweets when her mother pretends she isn't looking; the aunties tell her stories and reprimand her for stuffing her face with treats. It's only the children who get that something's just slightly off about her, with how she smiles sadly sometimes and gets a grown-up look in her eyes, but they welcome her into the fold anyways.

She revels in her youth, plays tag and hide and seek and jan-ken-pon with the other kids, enjoys her illicit sweets, bathes in the affection of the people for a sweet little girl. It's temporary, but childhood always is. The darkness of this new world will be coming soon, but for now, she laughs and smiles and pretends she doesn't remember dying.

* * *

**-iii. trial and error**

The girl bites her lip, screws her brows up. Concentrates, on that feeling of surging brightness, running through her veins and suffusing every pore of her body, pure energy borne from her being at the edges of her senses, for use at her disposal if she could only just reach out and _get it_-

A blue light springs forth in the tips of her fingers, and fizzles out as quickly as it came. Manami wants to scream, but that would be counterproductive and waste valuable time and energy she could be spending beating her chakra system into obedience.

As she screws her tiny face up for another try, Chie watches amusedly from the doorway. Katashi comes up behind her, the solid bulk of him a welcome presence at her back. "Having trouble?" he asks in her ear, pressing a soft kiss against her cheek, and she chuckles softly, leaning back against him.

"This is her eleventh try," she informs him. "I'll step in once she hits twenty."

"You are one brutal mother, Chie," he says, watching their daughter sit, cross-legged on the tatami mat, eyes scrunched shut and practically humming in place with her tension. "I know I never picked up chakra control this way. We have exercises for this. I can get the water dropper any time."

"Tashi. You have to understand, _you_ were born a clan child with parents who were both shinobi and willing to sit down and teach you," she says, face bright and sharp in the daylight filtering in through the window, light pooling in the hollows of her collarbones and shimmering off her lashes. "My father would have never allowed one of his _precious_ daughters to learn something as barbaric as _shinobi arts_. I had to learn the hard way. At least until I was able to convince my guard to actually show me what to do."

Katashi gives his wife a flat stare. "Chie, she's two years old."

"The early bird catches the worm, Tashi. Nami is tougher than that. She's our daughter." Her hazel eyes shimmer in the sunlight with affection and pride. "It's a learning experience, it'll be good for her. But you can get the water dropper once I step in."

They watch together as the tiny girl manages to summon a flickering spark to her fingertips, which hums and disperses as soon as she blinks. She lets out a small frustrated whine. It's rather adorable.

"I'm still maintaining the sadist part," Katashi says.

"Well it's a good thing you're an M then," Chie smiles sweetly.

Neither of them hear Manami silently choke on her spit in horror.

* * *

**-iv. swimming lessons**

It's a damp morning when tou-chan first whisks her out of the house into the woods. _He doesn't do this often_, she muses as she pads through wet grass in her sandals, the remnants of the rain the night before soaking her toes. Tou-chan doesn't always go out of the house some days, but when he does it's always straight into the woods, often times taking his little daughter with him. They've trekked often enough before, but this time she knows her father thinks it's about time she learned how to swim properly, instead of the regular doggy paddle. She was never that great a swimmer in her past life either, and she beams at him when he suggests it and jumps at the chance to learn guided by a man who grew up diving into the churning surf of Uzushiogakure.

Katashi seems to come alive in the smell of petrichor after the recent dry spell; water is his element as much as fire and steel are, and she clings to his side as they walk through the woods. He hums cheerfully, pointing out little things as they stroll: the skittish deer that roam the forest, bolting at so much as the slightest sound, with big black eyes and thin fur coats; the birds that frequent the area, painted in whites and blues and reds and every colour imaginable, a rainbow of fluttering feathers and high-pitched song above in the branches, peering curiously down on the landlubbers below; the marks of predatory animals, tracks and pawprints and claw marks on bark, and occasionally still-drying blood on the forest floor.

Manami watches her father bask in the dappled light of the morning, the morning radiance painting his red hair golden, illuminating his laughing grin even as his head brushes some leaves and scatters sparkling droplets of dew in his red-gold hair, on his scarred skin. She has never met a man quite like her father before she was reborn.

He takes her through the winding, worn path uphill through the woods, through branches and bushes until she can hear the gurgling rush of running water in the distance. When they clear their last low-hanging branch, Manami finds them standing before a waterfall, feeding into a pool connected to a river, trees surrounding the area and providing shade at the edges of the water.

Here, tou-chan strips off his shoes and shirt, placing them on a rock to warm in the sun, and grins at his daughter. "Nami-chan, come try the water!" He says this with a beaming smile, as if it isn't the morning after spring rain and the water isn't going to be colder than the Land of Snow. Evidently, her second thoughts show on her face, because he cajoles her again. "_Naaami_, you're gonna have to learn to swim sometime. The water's not _that_ cold."

Reluctantly, she takes off her clothes, leaving her in her shorts, bare-chested (because she's two years old, what is there to see?), before gingerly dipping her toes in the water. She shudders. Not as cold as she thought it would be, but still uncomfortable.

Her father gently coaxes her to walk in further, down the gentle slope of rocky sand into the waves. Manami notes that the water is crystal-clear and clean as can be, staring through it at the distortions of her feet. Ripples spread as she moves, outwards, colliding with bigger waves and rebounding backwards to where they came from.

Tou-chan grins at her when the water finally reaches the hollows underneath her arms, chilling her skin. "Good, baby girl. Hold on a moment…" Warm hands hold her waist and to his chest, a safety net of sorts. "You ready, Nami?" She nods, scrunches her eyes up, and takes a deep breath. "Okay! One, two-"

Without any further fanfare, he drops to his knees, dunking both of them fully in the water.

Her pulse echoes in her skull, mixed with the sound of the water, an oddly familiar sensation. There's a few short seconds where her breath is tight in her lungs, her eyes are clamped shut, her hair is buoyed and splayed out and the cool liquid surrounds her, rolls over her skin and tickles at her and if there wasn't a warm anchor around her body she'd be adrift, floating in an endless sea; the water caresses her and it feels she could lose herself in its embrace -

With a gasp and a loud splash they break the surface, Manami inhaling sweet air, shivering slightly as the heat seeps out of her, clinging to the warm plane that is her father's torso and blinking the water out of her eyes.

Tou-chan grins at her. "See, that wasn't so bad, was it?" Her response is a shudder and a mischievous little pout as Manami brings her little hands down and up to splatter cold water into her father's face as he inhales. It's amusing to watch him attempt to sputter water and laugh amusedly at the same time. "Cheeky brat." He says fondly. "C'mon, a few more of these, then we start properly."

From there, it's all cold water and warm skin and a flame of joy burning inside her, stoked higher by her father's laughs and smiles and gentle guidance and the euphoric sensation of being surrounded by her element. As they limp onto the shore with the sun high in the sky, still giggling and grinning as katon is used to dry their wet clothes, Manami thinks privately that a man like Uzumaki Katashi is the best father she could have ever hoped for.

* * *

**-v. calligraphy**

In her past life, Manami was a girl who grew up with English and Mandarin Chinese as her mother tongues, with some Cantonese on the side. But that little training is insufficient for the other world that is the Japanese language.

Manami may be exceptionally good at kanji for her age, but katakana is strange and hiragana even more so, even if they're technically more straightforward than the first. Kanji is essentially a bastardized version of traditional Chinese characters, which she can easily identify the meanings of (it's really only a matter of assigning new sounds), but it's hard to pin down exactly which character is which in the other two. Her writing is like chicken scratch, and her mother sighs and gently corrects her. Bit by bit, she improves.

The days fly by; soon, she will turn four. Spring and days of swimming in the pool in the forest in the golden light of the morning are gone. The air is crisp with the first signs of autumn; the mornings are colder, the sky clear. Here, at the edge of the land of eternal summer, the cold seeps in through the cracks and chills bare skin and bare earth, but never enough to erase the heat that runs in the veins of the land, of the people.

She sits with kaa-chan in the mornings, ink and brushes and paper spread out on the table, the green of the trees outside browning and darkening and brightening into the red and gold of falling leaves, blowing on the northern wind through the shoji doors. The scrolls are held down with paperweights to keep them from joining their cousins on the breeze, and the ink words she scrawls onto the paper weigh it down further. She tries to emulate her mother's flowing script, but her childish scribbles pale in comparison to the grace of the sweeping strokes her mother makes.

She keeps trying. She'll get there someday.

It's an overcast morning. Kaa-chan's walked out to get some hot tea to combat the chill; Manami is diligently writing out a short paragraph on the kind of things she's seen in the woods. She's progressed far enough to be able to write out basic sentences, but nothing near the kind of proficiency she had in English. She taps her lip with the butt of her brush and thinks. _Let's see_. _Lots of trees, a pool with a waterfall, the river, birds, deer, flowers,_ what else? She writes down what she's got anyways, small hands tracing shapes she'd practiced before-

The cawing of a crow in the distant darkening woods.

_(a man named weasel with crows for friends; his brother, lightning-fingers become avenger; the clan who fanned flames, all dead in a single night save three; the world brought into ruin by a man with one red, kaleidoscope eye)_

_(three: traitor, avenger, griever)_

She flinches.

_(all: murderer)_

The clean stroke veers off sharply. Manami stares in dismay at her wrecked script and feels tears well up in her eyes, childish frustration taking over her. She sniffles despite herself; there's a lump in the back of her throat. She feels an awful lot like crying, and then throwing something in the nearest river. Preferably that stupid, _stupid_ bird.

It's at this point Chie walks in, a tray with two piping hot cups of tea in her hands, long black hair tied back in a neat bun, stray strands spilling out and contrasting against her peach skin. Dark eyes pick out the slash against the meticulously written characters, the trembling form of a little girl with red hair. She kneels down beside her daughter, sets the tea on the table, then cups her face. The skin of her palms is warm against her wet, autumn-kissed cheeks.

"Oh, Nami, what happened?" The girl sniffs again; a portion of her mind reminds her this is undignified, but the rest of her is overtaken with _frustration_ and _anger_ and _disappointment_, and she can't swallow down the thickness in the back of her throat. "You got startled?" Her mother is ever-unnerringly perceptive. Manami nods and keeps her shaking lips pressed tightly together, for fear of the voice that might come out.

Kaa-san chuckles, moves to sit behind the young girl, and with her black-spotted fingers takes her daughter's little hands in her own and guides her. Words weave together on the paper as she watches, entranced by her mother's elegant handwriting. "Nami-chan, don't look so sad," she murmurs, warm breath above her head. "Just because you mess up doesn't mean it's the end. You can try again."

Manami leans back into the warmth of her mother's body, and lets her tension seep away as her mother soothes her out of her ire. Yamamoto Chie is, by far, the best mother she could have, in any life, ever been blessed with.

* * *

**-vi. protect**

Manami's only three when her parents decide to give her the seals.

She's known for weeks, from hushed voices in the hallways, outside the sliding door of her room in the middle of the night, when the adults are so sure that their baby girl is asleep, dreaming of a better world than this. She pinches herself awake from the haze of sleep and listens from her futon as her parents discuss and argue and debate over the decision.

It is love that drives them to do this; love for their daughter, who they hope will be protected by the seals they plan to scrawl across her skin; love for each other, wanting nothing more than to preserve the child they had brought up together; love for their work, their art which they have poured so much energy and devotion and love and precious, precious time.

So when they take her aside one rainy morning and tell her truthfully what they wish to do, she has no objections. In fact, she welcomes it. She wants her parents' art on her skin, ink over her flesh in black and red like their hair mixed together, the proof of their love for her and for each other. She loves them, she trusts them. She tells them as much. They've known for a long time now that their daughter is mature beyond her years (though those years are _quite_ more than what they think), so they simply nod and prepare.

(Manami's not in the habit of lying to herself; as she grows into their shoes, they will pass on and leave her to them. It will be nice to have a memoir of them that can never be lost.)

They lay down a mat in her bedroom, sit her down and make her bare her upper body. Brushes in hand and chakra ink poured into a bowl, they gently trace lines, covering her upper back first then moving on to her shoulders, running down her arms to her hands. The major seals lie over her tenketsu, kanji and swirling script glowing faintly when her father whispers_ "Seal,"_ and the ink congeals and sinks into her skin.

The next morning, she traces the shapes on her skin with her bare, still-soft fingers, caressing curves and strokes and circles, written into the pale flesh of her skin. They've faded away to hide from prying eyes but the weight of it lies on her shoulders, on her back, a comforting presence. The ink wraps around her and protects her, her mother and father's fierce love.

She carries her parents' wills on her back. Wherever she may go now, they will be with her.

* * *

**-vii. life lessons**

Her mother uses knives, but her true weapons are paper and ink, painted words spelling doom for any who dare to cross her; the seals are woven into her clothes, inked finely into the skin of her arms, built into the foundations of their home. Some days she lets Manami touch the patterns on the skin of her back and tells her what they mean: _here, this is for shielding; the curve here floods chakra there for regeneration._

Yamamoto Chie was not born a warrior, she tells her daughter. Yamamoto Chie was born into luxury, the Fire Daimyo's middle daughter, plain compared to her beautiful sisters and handsome brothers. But she was blessed with an iron will, a razor wit and a drive to become something more than what she was; and so she left the palace behind, journeyed to Uzushiogakure and found herself a master to teach her fuuinjutsu and its intricacies.

"With these hands," Kaa-san says, entangling her daughter's soft fingers with her own inkstained ones, "I have clawed my way to the top, kicking and screaming and fighting until I became worthy of the privileges I was given because of my birth. I am where I am because of my own actions, not those of others. Wherever you end up in life, Nami," she fixes her with a single look, "be there because of your own actions and choices, not those of others. Even if you think you've got no options, you're wrong. There's always another way."

Her father's weapons are more traditional: all steel and metal, clanging and cleaving with razor sharp edges. He is a forger, a blacksmith, one of Uzushio's prized ironworkers, who carves seals into steel and creates the finest weapons in the Elemental Nations; his work shows in the burn scars along his thick arms and his rough, calloused hands. Men have killed and died to perfect his art; Manami touches the scars crisscrossing the tough planes of his torso and marvels at the deep furrows wrought by those envious of her father's skills.

Uzumaki Katashi was born and bred in a village hidden in the eddies of an island to the southern shores, to a clan of fire-haired and bright-hearted people, each one in their own way radiant as a star. He chose to apprentice himself to the old master blacksmith and learn his trade, in order to make his own living and protect his family. But Uzushiogakure had far too many fearful of their power, and he was only one man. It wasn't enough to save them.

Her father takes her soft child's hands in his own blacksmith's ones and guides them to touch a jagged ridge across where his heart lies. "These scars," Tou-san tells her, "have come from many people, in many places, for many reasons. They're marks of failure. They remind me that I'm not invincible, that I'm only human, with all of a human's flaws and weaknesses. Never let yourself believe that you're anything more than mortal."

"And whatever scars you may get in future, Nami," her father crosses the gap between them and kisses her forehead, "don't ever try to hide them. No matter what, wear them with pride. Remember that you're human."

* * *

_AN: I had such a rad time writing this you have no freakin' clue. Please review and tell me what you thought! We've got quite a bit ahead of us yet in this story._


	2. before they turn the summer into dust

_(29/5/2015) AN: Well. Um. Sorry, I got lost on the road of life. I did say it wasn't dead. _

_Mostly written thanks to being recently struck by a flood of inspiration from rereading literally all of **Catch Your Breath** by Lang Noi. Jeez that fic is so good it is unreal. Anyways. All of this is unbeta'ed, as is the usual protocol for my fics, so if you see any glaring errors or boring cliches feel free to point them out. Please enjoy this long, long overdue chapter!_

* * *

**-viii. kakurenbo**

"Ne, ne, Nami-chan!"

Manami looks up from her book to meet the bright brown eyes of a scruffy-haired boy. He grins cheerfully at her, gap-toothed and innocent. "Hey, have you seen any of the other kids?"

The dark-haired girl raises an eyebrow, sat in the gentle shade of a towering, flowering green-leafed tree, the wind softly rustling through the branches and scattering dappled sunlight and white petals on her skin, reflecting in the blue pools of her eyes. "Why're you askin'?"

"We-ell…" the boy drags on his syllables slowly. "I'm supposed ta be lookin' for 'em since we're playin' _kakurenbo_, but I can't find no-one. So?"

The girl shakes her head. "Sorry, Kenta, haven't seen anyone. Maybe they snuck into Mitsuko-baachan's shop again," she offers.

The boy narrows her eyes at her. "You _su-ure_, Nami?"

"Pretty sure, Kenta."

Kenta shrugs. "Okay, I'll check. Thanks, Nami-chan!" He grins, and dashes off down the road.

Manami waits until his mop of dark hair disappears behind a building before she allows a delighted smile to stretch across her face gently, like a ripple across a still pond. "He's gone," she says aloud, looking up into the leaves above her.

A creak, rustle, a loud '_oof_' of discomfort. A five-year old body comes tumbling out of the bony caress of the tree branches, leaves and flowers falling down in a halo around it, bright green leaves and small white blossoms scattered in dark green hair. A sun-kissed face looks up, wide-eyed and stained with grass-green and the flush of exhilarated youth.

The black-haired girl brings a finger up to her lips, still smiling, radiant face bathed in shifting leaf-dappled sunlight and flushed in the fresh air of spring,

The green-haired girl grins in answer. Scrambling to her feet, she stands tall, the curves of baby fat still clinging to her limbs but slowly burning away with youthful energy. In sync, they high-five with right hands, then left, _up down double-tap explosion_! The last motion is accompanied with _fwoosh_ noises.

The girl laughs brightly, shaking her head and brushing stray leaves and petals off her tan skin. "That was the _best_, stupid Kenta didn't s'pect a _thing_!"

Manami giggles and makes shooing motions. "Go on, Asuka, get going b'fore he comes back!"

Kita Asuka beams, shoots off a salute, and takes off in the opposite direction. Ducking into an alley, her viridian head shimmers in the sunlight for an instant before it disappears into shadows.

Content, the girl leans back, cracks open her book once more. Sits there, bathed in sunshine and ever-shifting leaf-shadows, the breeze whistling in her ears and tangling in her black-dyed hair, tiny child's hands quietly turning the pages of her book, blue eyes looking down the same shade as the sky above. wishes she could live in these halcyon days forever.

* * *

**-ix. children**

Since Manami is not yet of age to go to the local school, and will not be until she turns five, she has an ungodly amount of free time, usually taken up with trailing after her parents or darting around Midoritani with the other too-young children.

(Parents in this world are startlingly relaxed about their children wandering off, but Manami suspects the little emblems embroidered on the insides of her clothes are Kaa-chan's sealwork, so she feels safer knowing her mother always has an eye on her.)

The other children are a mishmash of different faces, all of their kin well known among Midoritani's tight-knit community: Asuka's family runs the Kita bookshop; Amaya's grandmother is Kurosawa Mitsuko, beloved granny to all the children and owner of the general store; Eiji and Osamu's family are traders, who leave them in Midoritani with their eccentric grandfather. Kenta's parents run the biggest and best inn in town; Ran's father is the local woodcutter; Michio's mother is the apothecary assistant; Kyon's family run a ramen stand; Daisuke's mother is the local doctor. Manami's mother is known as the kind demure helper to Mitsuko-baachan and her father a reclusive but genius metalworker.

(No-one ever mentions it, but everyone knows Michio's gentle mother is a refugee from Kirigakure. Midoritani knows and accepts Himuro Kaede and her son as one of their own, and no-one judges when the boy accidentally turns a puddle to ice one day.)

Together, they play games both familiar and new to her - schoolyard classics like the hand-slapping game, chopsticks, Duck Duck Goose_; _but also games wholly new to her, _kagome kagome _and _hana ichi monme. _Tag is _onigokko, _hide-and-seek is _kakurenbo, _and Red Light Green Light is declared when someone cries for a game of _Darumasan ga koronda. _They pick up sticks to draw out the hopscotch tiles in the dusty paths so they can play _ken ken pa, _and Asuka always has jump-ropes to play _nawatobi _with. And of course, not a day goes by where one of the boys doesn't bring up a game of Shinobi, acting out living legends and famous battles with broken sticks and strips of cloth to wear as headbands. It's great to be able to shed any semblance of maturity and just act like a child among other children, and Manami revels in it.

Asuka is happy and bright and the type of child who worms their way into your heart by force of personality, and when Kaa-chan firstly gently introduces her to the children it's Asuka who takes her by the hand and makes her part of the group. Amaya is chirpy and bubbly and whip-smart. Eiji is brash and hotheaded but oh so kind. Osamu is a cheeky immature brat but surprisingly sweet and endlessly loyal. Kenta is a joker and loves making others laugh, though he's often insensitive. Ran is a tiny prickly slip of a girl with a golden heart and hates being underestimated. Michio is shy and stoic but hates losing, becoming fast rivals with the other boys in their games. Kyon is a longsuffering, too-mature straight man, and undoubtedly one of the most sensible and down-to-earth kids in town. Daisuke just loves being around people, and is calm and reliable and easy to talk to. They're good kids and great friends, and accept her despite her oddness and quietness and the weary look in her eyes.

The Second Shinobi World War passed years ago, meaning the third is lurking on the horizon, just waiting to tear the lands apart in a sea of endless battle and set in motion the events that would ravage the world years later. Midoritani is never mentioned in the series, so Manami has no idea what may happen to them, but she prays that these kids at least make it out okay. They don't deserve what's coming.

* * *

**-x. learning**

Her parents don't let her go without an education, though. Writing and calligraphy lessons with Kaa-chan, maths and swimming and taijutsu with Tou-chan, and general knowledge and chakra control with both of them. Manami picks up fuuinjutsu quickly and demands for her parents to teach it to her, so in conjunction with calligraphy Chie weaves in beginner's lessons in sealwork and in the evenings Manami darts into the forge to learn her father's craft and be taught how to maintain steel. Her chakra reserves are still too tiny to attempt anything other than basic instinctive muscle enhancement, but fuuinjutsu requires nothing more than a steady hand and a willing open mind.

Her parents also have a tendency to make no noise when they move, soundlessly drifting through the house. They have to focus to make sound so as to not startle her, but Manami wants to know how to move as they do, and trails after her mother and father, doing her best to soften her steps and move lightly. Kaa-chan giggles and kisses her forehead and calls her _kittenfoot_, her clumsy child's body doing its best to imitate the Cat's Paw, a technique as essential to shinobi life as water-walking or wall-climbing.

Once she turns three, they start her on proper combat lessons. Her father wields massive _tsurugi _and beautiful sleek _katana_ with his strong arms and steady hands. He adjusts her grip around her wooden bokken so she doesn't strain her muscles unnecessarily, nudging tiny limbs into place so she learns how to settle into a proper stance. She parrots his actions, awkwardly imitating his graceful, powerful movements. When her father swings his blades they practically sing with joy, steel humming with power as it slices through the air; she wants to be able to do that too, and diligently practices the kata of what Tou-chan calls _Namikiri-ryū._

They have no wooden kunai, and in place of it Katashi makes small blunt metal kunai and shuriken for her to practice with, properly weighted so she learns how to fling them like a true shinobi. Kaa-chan takes over lessons in shurikenjutsu and kunai wielding, being the superior of the two in that regard, and shows her daughter how anything can be utilised as a weapon, with enough creativity and skill.

(She takes a single chopstick in her slender inkstained fingers, and flicks her wrist so the delicate wooden utensil pierces straight into the thick trunk of a tree, imbedded halfway in the wood. Manami stares, wide-eyed and thinks happily that her mother is the actual best.)

Besides the sealwork, blade-handling and other lessons, Chie and Katashi always take the time to teach their daughter a variety of games. Cat's cradle is a particular favorite, as are a number of rhythm and clapping games designed to improve dexterity and flexibility, but _jan-ken-pon_ is ever present (Kaa-chan and Tou-chan use it to decide chores). Tou-chan show her how to play _otedama, _juggling the little silk bean bags with surprising dexterity for his rough hands and entrusting her with his own worn childhood set; Kaa-chan teaches her _go _and _shougi, _and is a deft hand at both, patiently explaining mechanics and tactics and gently guiding her on. They teach her handseals as well, with a song to help shinobi children memorise the different positions of fingers, and a little game where you sing the song faster and faster and form the seals in time as the tempo escalates.

Her parents alternate to read to her before bedtime, and she falls asleep to the soothing sounds of her mother's clear soprano and her father's husky baritone, telling her of ninja legends like the Rikudo Sennin, the legendary Sannin, and other folktales like Momotaro, Orihime and Hikoboshi, Issun-boshi, and the Crane Wife. Manami has a book full of Shinto myths that is her favorite, and she curls up to her mother and father and drifts off to legends: the origin story of Izanami and Izanagi, Ame-no-uzume dancing to coax Amaterasu out of the cave, Susanoo'o slaying Yamata no Orochi and saving Kushinada-hime.

(The last one is her personal favorite, and she likes to think of the Yellow Flash and the Bloody Habanero, still young and alive and in love in spite of the war raging around them. If she gets a chance, she wants to be able to change their fates, at least.)

* * *

**-xi. sealing**

_Fuuinjutsu_, Manami thinks to herself, _is absolutely ridiculous._

In this world, technology does not dominate like in her old life; instead seals are used for _everything_. Combat, protection, reinforcement, healing, storage, even down to the most mundane things as _air-conditioning_. (The inside of the house is always cool in summer and pleasantly warm in winter, thanks to the seals in the walls trapping and repelling heat when necessary.)

Like technology, though, fuuinjutsu is complicated and little studied and understood by the general populace. Rather like building electronic circuits long ago in Physics class, seals all have the same basic components - power source, input mechanism, output mechanism, channels for the flow of energy, and different parts to determine the function and change the outcome as the sealer sees fit. However, between different styles, there are a million different ways of interpreting these components and arranging to end up with a desirable result, and a million different ways that a seal can take a turn for the worse. To truly succeed in the art of fuuinjutsu, one must understand the forces they are attempting to harness in order to achieve their goals - the properties of their chosen materials, the energy flows, external stimuli, and how chakra reacts to these.

Chie likes to tell her stories of her days as an apprentice, where she'd stagger to her room covered in ink and dust and burn marks from failed tests and botched seals, and of the miracles the Uzumaki could pull off with a bottle of chakra ink, a brush and a medium. There's a very good reason Uzushiogakure was so feared.

There are dozens of different theories of sealing, often contradictory. Some sealers use cyclic sealing, circles of power redistributing energy in an endless loop; triangular, Most styles are kanji-based, the most easily decipherable and understandable, but many prefer other methods: runic, using old glyphs similar to ancient, ancient Chinese script; astrological, utilising symbols representing constellations and the animals of the zodiac; the Eight Trigrams, of sky, marsh, fire, lightning, wind, water, mountain and earth; the Three States (solid, gas, liquid) or Three Treasures (Buddha, Dharma and Sangha); Yin-and-Yang and occasionally Wuji; arithmetical and geometrical and countless more styles. Some sealmasters even came up with their own code languages to convey their intent upon their seals.

Uzushiogakure was proficient in all of these types, and had a specific branch of its own, jealously hoarded amongst its own and capable of great power. Technically a subset of cyclical sealing, since it relies mainly on spirals, like the whirlpools surrounding the seas of their home islands, Uzushio-style fuuinjutsu is both powerful and often unstable, and needs to be heavily reinforced - but if executed properly, they become miracle workers.

(Sealing a Bijuu, beings of pure chakra which could level mountains with mere flicks of their tails, is a superhuman feat, and one that Uzushio-style seals managed and will manage to successfully pull off three times in a row, consistently and so thoroughly that the third jinchuuriki of the Kyuubi wouldn't know that he was one until he turned twelve.)

Manami learns all of these things, of the legendary feats of Uzushiogakure and the reason they were destroyed, and traces the seals lining her skin with considering hands. It's a heavy burden she carries upon her shoulders, but it's a welcome weight.

She listens to her mother and father's words, reads scrolls and books of theory, and takes her brush in her hand and practices. Honoring the dead clan her father hail from and the village her parents swore their loyalty to is the least she can do as their daughter.

* * *

**-xii. marked**

All the members of Manami's little family are marked with seals on their skin, marks of pride and love placed there voluntarily. The storage seal just above Katashi's left hip stores an ancient sword and family heirloom, and the marks encircling his wrists and running up till his forearms create solid chakra armour to protect his arms in case of a swordfight. Chie's pale back is covered in a web of dark blue seals: archaic kanji for shielding, chaining, regeneration spread delicately all over her skin, and oddly enough, the words for octopus painted in black at at the small of her back. Both of them have identical spiral patterns tattooed on their right shoulders, invisible unless chakra is channeled through them; every Uzushio shinobi bears the symbol, used as identification and a mark of pride.

The seals painted across her skin are a style of Chie and Katashi's own, the two working together to create something greater than the sum of their parts. Twin red seals lie on the insides of her palms and wrists, with lines of script flowing up the insides of her forearms to dip down and intersect with the biggest seal. On her back, in the space between her shoulders, a black spiral is inked into her skin, symbols for regeneration and deflection and shielding written in Kaa-chan's elegant flowing script outwards in an eight-point seal. The schematics are laid out on a scroll which her parents keep in a hidden nook in the ceiling of their room, and when Manami asks them they bring it out for her to look at. Patiently, they spell out the specific parts, repeating foreign words for their small daughter to comprehend.

The parallel kanji for absorption on her palms, the twin red seals on her wrists acting as chakra filters, separating and channeling any malign energy to be stored temporarily and then expelled back through the palms whenever the user sees fit. To activate, the user forms a special handseal (two hands clasped together parallel to chest, index and ring fingers pointed up) and claps their hands together. Chakra is then absorbed through the hands (speed setting adjustable) and directed through the filters; one part is directly added into the user's chakra circulation system, while the other part is separated from the main flow and sent straight through to the back seal.

The back seal is a _doozy_; one part of it encourages regeneration on a cellular level, aiding in the development of muscle and tissue, and speeding up her healing to a frankly ridiculous level if she absorbs enough. (Not jinchuuriki levels, but the sheer potential once she grows old enough to handle that much chakra is _amazing_. Gashes closing up within the hour, broken bones and tendons knitting back together within a 24-hour period, and other superhuman stunts.)

Another part of it requires conscious activation from the user, spreading a layer of refined chakra over the skin to redirect some of the energy of physical blows and jutsu to the palm seals to be absorbed, and with poor chakra control wastes energy incredibly quickly if the user cannot keep the layer cohesive. (It's currently sealed away under a second seal, and will only be unlocked once she reaches a more suitable age.

The third part uses kanji for shielding to form a solid danger-triggered chakra barrier around the user which disintegrates within a minute, using up a considerable amount of chakra but requiring no control to maintain it. It serves as a defense mechanism should Manami ever be under attack, and she can deactivate it with her own chakra if necessary.

The best part of the array, though, is the memory seal laid on the spiral in the middle of her back, containing all of the fuuinjutsu knowledge of her parents combined (and considering both of them trained under Uzumaki fuuinjutsu masters in a hidden village destroyed for its awesome sealwork ability, that comprises of a _lot_.) Activating it requires her to channel chakra into her hands and then touch each palm to the opposite shoulder, connecting the symbols for absorption with memory and mind, all while keeping a specific image in her head of what she wants to search for. This acts as the unlocking mechanism for the memory seal, which then takes the thought at the forefront of the mind and uses it as input for a search engine, singling out the relevant pieces of information and filtering it into her mind at a manageable pace. It's useful, and a reliable method of storing away vital information only for her to access, though it gives her a terrible migraine if she keeps it active for more than half a minute at a time or has too broad a search in mind.

There's even a built-in tutorial for the entire array separate from the memory seal, information flooding into her mind on how to utilise, repair and recreate the seals if she channels chakra into a small compressed seal on the nape of her neck.

Her parents make very sure to clearly warn her of the dangers of using the seals - killing her victims with chakra exhaustion; chakra overload from absorbing for than her fragile child's body can take; potentially breaking the filtration seals if she absorbs chakra too malign; brain damage from keeping the memory seals open for too long and overloading her mind. With all of the warnings though, the underlying message is that they trust her not to misuse the power they've gifted her with, the array of seals they've designed to protect her and keep her safe, and it makes something warm sing in her chest.

She hugs them both tight in her scrawny arms (still too small to fit more than a quarter in her hold) and resolves to use this power and keep them safe. Somehow.

* * *

**-xiii. storm**

The chill of winter seeps into autumn's warm coolness, chasing away the lingering heat of summer. The sky is clouded and dark, for a change - wild winds roar through the town, whipping the trees into a frenzy, battering fruitlessly at strong walls and sturdy rooftops. Icy rain falls like a hailstorm of stones, raindrops ramming against any surface they fall upon, making clanging and banging and a terrible ruckus.

In the upstairs apartment of a general store, ten children wrapped in fluffy towels sit around a small, low circular table. Across the age-warped surface of the wood, ten small wooden cups sit before ten little bodies, hot chocolate steaming within its confines. Manami, age three and a half, sips gingerly at her cup, careful of the hot liquid, watching her friends talk over the din of the autumn storm outside.

"Hey, whatcha wanna do when you're a grown-up?" Someone asks idly.

"I wanna be a ninja!"

It's a brown-eyed boy who makes the proclamation, loud and proud, grinning with the foolish hope of youth. "I'm gonna go t' Kusagak're and become a strong ninja and protect Midoritani!"

A green-haired girl frowns. "Stupid Kenta. If you're a Kusa ninja you're gonna hafta protect Kusa first, not the town."

He pouts in response. "Aaaasukaaaaa, yer such a _kiiiilljoy_."

Another child speaks, this one dark-haired and violet-eyed. "Well, then we gotta make our own Hidden Village then! Tanigakure no Sato! I'll be the Kage!"

""Hey!" pipes up a black-haired boy, a fire sparking in his dark eyes. "You can't just say you're gonna be Kage! We gotta vote on it!"

"Who said we were making a ninja village in the first place?" asks Amaya, dark blue hair bundled up in a towel and fragile shoulders cloaked in fluffy white. She got the most soaked out of all of their little group when they ran for Mitsuko-baachan's shop. "We should make Midoritani into a biiig city instead!"

"Yeah, 'Maya's right!" agrees a grey-eyed boy. "Ninjas are dumb. We should make a huge city where no-one has ta fight and we c'n all just play together."

"Who says we gotta stay here?" A small boy with scruffy black hair and a scar under his eye, face stretched into a wide, gap-toothed grin. "Let's go sail the seas an' be pirates!"

"Y'_all_ways wanna play pirates, 'Samu," whines another, big brown eyes scrunched up in a pout. "Can't we jus' play together here?"

A crackle of lightning and the boom of a thunderclap rattle through the walls. The children all glance, wide-eyed to the window, where the wind outside howls and the rain batters at the glass.

Manami pipes up. "I think," she says, "we should just stay inside right now."

"That's a good idea."

The silence lasts for little more than a minute before Amaya coughs. "Um, I think Mitsuko-baachan has Snap cards."

"The regular kind or the 'splodey kind?"

"Regular." The others all give a whine of disappointment. Shinobi Snap cards are a rarity in a small town like Midoritani, but they're harmless and extremely fun and almost always result in the players coming out covered in clouds of dust and ink splatter. Amaya pouts. "_Heyyy,_ don't whine, s'not baachan's fault Kenta wrecked our last set."

At this reminder, eight children level stares at the boy, who sweats, flushes red and stammers, "H-hey, I didn't know they'd stop working if you spilled tea on 'em!"

Manami is quick to defuse the situation. "It's okay, it was an accident, right?" Kenta gives a furious nod. "We all make mistakes, so it's fine. Maya, can you go get the cards from Mitsuko-baachan?" The blue-haired girl chirps out an affirmative and gets to her feet, darting out of the room and back in with the stack of cards in hand.

Manami deals out the cards with deft hands, and the band of children settle in loudly for a long, homebound day. The sounds of the storm raging outside never manage to overpower the bright exuberant din of laughing children, and the dark-haired girl watches them with old blue eyes, sips her hot chocolate and smiles.

* * *

_AN: The next several drabbles are basically all written up til Manami turns five. They'll come out sometime in June._

_Sealing theories and stuff shamelessly ripped from Dreaming of Sunshine, Chapter 8. Because I couldn't find a better fan explanation and canon gives us Basically Nothing on fuuinjutsu._

**chaosrin** \- I won't spoil anything, but yes, the Fire Daimyo connection does come in play much, much later.


	3. take one last look at what you're leavin

_AN: In which i completely fail to keep my promises. (-_-") Sorry this is so late guys. I just started my A-levels, so getting settled in was kind of a hectic affair, plus I was struck with writer's block for a specific drabble which I HAD to keep in otherwise the story wouldn't flow and ... *sigh*. Sorry about the lateness, guys! To make up for it, have an extra-long chapter! In which the plot finally gets moving._

* * *

**-xv. hidden in the whirlpool**

"Which story do you want tonight, Nami?"

"Tell me somethin' new, tou-chan." Her words are slurred with the drooping of her eyes, and she cracks a tiny yawn.

The man chuckles, deep vibrations resounding through his chest. "Alright...then I'll tell you about the legend of the founding of Uzushiogakure."

Manami curls up contentedly into Katashi's side as he speaks.

"_Long ago, when the land was still unsteady and unstable and young, and warring clans tore the earth asunder in their quests for dominance, there was a girl with long dark hair and warm brown eyes. _

_She was a woman of great intelligence and sought knowledge with a hunger unmatched by her peers, searching far and wide for the wisest sages and the most ancient tomes, amassing information in order to sate her burning curiosity._

_With the knowledge she had attained, she discovered how to create power out of words, and how to rend space with but a single inked sigil, and shared this knowledge with her clan. But still she was restless, and desired to find someplace new to settle down, far from the bloody battlefields, and so she rallied her clan to move and find a new place to settle down. Taking with them her best friend, a young man learning the way of the sword, they roamed the lands and the seas._

_Finally they found a small cluster of islands, protected by a barrier of whirlpools, the waters raging and the skies above stormy as the wrath of old gods. But the woman feared no gods, and with ink, brush and breath she safeguarded their ships from harm in the rough waters, letting them pass through to land._

_The source of the storm rose out of the shore to meet them - a great dragon, old as the mountains and seas, with reign over the skies and seas, who had made the islands his realm and final resting place. Its only wish was to finally pass on and return to the sea which it had been born from, for the dragon had grown old and weary, but none could pierce its hide or find some way to end it. If the humans could fulfil its wish, it said, voice like the clap of thunder, then it would gladly give its realm over to them._

_The woman agreed to fulfil the dragon's death wish, and for eighty-eight days and nights she and her apprentices worked tirelessly to scour the islands and tomes, and devise some way of ending the beast's life._

_Finally, on the dawn of the eighty-ninth day, the woman surfaced from her scrolls and ink, and smiled._

_The woman placed the seal they had created upon the brow of the old beast, and with a clap of her hands and a chant to the gods, the dragon's lifeforce slipped from its scales to rush through the air, the energy leaving it gently and painlessly. The great dragon gave a final throaty, rumbling cry, and as its echoes faded into the horizon it crashed into the surf, a great wave rising up to meet it and pull the body of the noble beast into the embrace of the churning waters below._

_The dying spirit of the dragon surged through all of the people present, staining their hair red like the blood of the guardian beast and their eyes all shades of blue and violet and green like the shimmering iridescent scales and the endless waves surrounding the isles._

_Thus the woman and her clan took on the name of Uzumaki, in honour of their new home and the guardian beast they had helped pass on to gain it, and the fire-haired children of the surf would live on for many eras to come."_

Manami yawns, mumbles absentmindedly, "If we got dragon powers, how come we don't got dragon scales?"

Katashi chuckles, the sound rumbling through his chest. "Well, it's said that the first Uzumaki had dragonskin and teeth and claws, from taking in the chakra of the great dragon. But that trait died out as the dragonblood thinned. The last dragonscale Uzumaki lived over three hundred years ago, before the Warring Clans Era. Now, we Uzumaki only have our chakra pools, long lives, and tempers to show our heritage, but I think that's enough."

The little girl giggles, eyelids dragging shut. "Hair 'n' eyes too, tou-chan..."

Her father gently cradles his daughter to his chest, soothed by the weight of her tiny body against his. "Can't forget about that. Eyes the colour of the ocean waves and hair red as dragon blood. That's where you get your fire-hair from, 'Nami."

That night, Manami dreams of the surf and sea air, dragonblood scarlet in the azure water, and dragonspirit, thrumming through her veins like a song.

* * *

**-xvi. beginning's end **

When the men with dark clothes and forehead protectors come, Manami's not overly shocked.

The war begins a few months before, news carried to Midoritani by a haggard trade caravan, and from that moment onwards they all know the town will not go untouched. Small, neutral ground though it may be, Midoritani lies in Kusa no Kuni, near Kusagakure, and between Iwagakure and Konohagakure, mortal enemies, and as a port of trade they could be taken over by either side to further the war. It's only a matter of time until then. Manami's parents are restless, bags packed and ready if flight is necessary, but they refuse to flee until they have to.

(Himuro Kaede and her son quietly flee a month after the news comes, packing up and riding out with a trade caravan to parts unknown. Midoritani helps them pack whatever necessities they needed, bids her and Michio a fond farewell and hopes for their safety and return in more peaceful times.)

In the middle of an autumn night, a few days before the full moon, they come.

It's all a bit of a blur: her sleep-hazy mind recalls waking, sitting up, feeling uneasy as a foul, oily black taste finds itself right in her face for a few short seconds. Then her mother appears, a ghost in pale nightclothes and strands of night-black hair framing her steel eyes in the autumn moonlight streaming through the open window and the steel knives clutched in white-knuckled hands -

_thu-thunk_

A split-second: twin blurs of light off sharp edges flying past her, wind flashing past her; the nerves at the roots of her hairs tingle as they move. Two metallic sounds, muffled by cloth and flesh and blood. There's a choking sound behind her as flecks of something liquid land on her back and bare skin. Mother's hands come back down, still clutching three blades in the hollows between her inkstained fingers as she strides forward, soundlessly stepping in her bedroom sandals.

_What just-_

Manami whips her head around, and sees the black-clad figure spread-eagled and pinned to the wall, a knife imbedded in each twitching palm, blood spilling out over calloused, scarred palms as they struggle fruitlessly. Moonlight glints off the steel plate on the cloaked forehead, shadows gathering in the stylized carving of a mountain.

Kaa-san steps forward, raises her hand -

_it glitters like silver _

\- and slices.

The body slumps, then falls as the two knives are deftly plucked from their bloody sheaths. When kaa-san turns around, crimson is spattered across the front of her pastel sleeping yukata. Her eyes, cold steel, waver and melt back into something warmer, but its core is frigid.

Manami finds her voice, small and fragile that it is. "Kaa-chan?"

The voice that answers her is quiet and deathly serious. "Manami, shush. They've found us."

* * *

**-xvii. flight**

Chie does not allow herself to tremble as she bundles her five-year old daughter into a worn set of dark blue robes, archaic seals of protection woven into the embroidery and fabric itself. Her long black hair is tied back into a ponytail, messy stray strands brushing her face, where her eyes glimmer in the dim, hard and dark like steel in the shadows. Manami's not used to seeing her mother, so unflappable, unshakeable, look like she's about to rip someone's heart out. There's still flecks of blood on her high pale cheeks, and the girl reaches up with small, trembling hands to wipe off the red. Her fingers smell of iron.

Kaa-san weaves her fingers in the inside of the robes, finds the intricate seal emblazoned across her little girl's back with ink-stained fingertips. Manami can feel the cool touch against her back, humming with energy, shifting little things in her skin and veins that make her itch; if she opens her eyes and lifts her sea-salt wet face from where it's buried in the clothed crook of her mother's shoulder (tiny hands wound tightly around her mother's torso jostling the countless scrolls lined along the inside of her jacket) she knows she will see azure blue, illuminating her mother's pale face with an unearthly glow. She can fit half a mother into her arms now (it's _not enough._)

Tou-san drops into the room through the trapdoor above and shuts it behind him, a veritable armoury hidden in the metal bands round his arms and the paper scrolls tucked into the folds of his dark coat. His sword, a long _tsurugi, _all battle-bloodied steel and words of power engraved in the sharp blade, is strapped and sheathed in bandages across his back. Manami's never seen him in action with it before, but he's shown it to her before, gently laying it out across the table as he cleans and polishes it till it shines, light off the cutting edge, as if wiping it would somehow erase the bloodstains she can feel permeate the steel.

His face is grim with resolve. Now that all three members of their little family are safely underground and away from the men prowling the house above, he's free to bite his finger and press it against a small seal on the wall.

The smudge of red sends the array aglow, veins of glowing blue spreading themselves across the room, pulsing with energy. Chakra runs under her bare feet and converges in the center of the floor, opening another trapdoor. Stairs lead down into shadow for a fleeting moment before the blue invades it, driving away the uncertain darkness and showing every little speck of dust that rises from its depths.

Her parents share a look. Arms wind around her and lift her up into her father's arms. Her mother pastes a single paper seal on the upper trapdoor before coming back to tou-san's right side.

(She recognises the marks on the tag; she's seen her mother's work a thousand times, she knows the lines and words that come together to create tiny, flimsy, ink-and-paper explosives.)

Together, they venture deeper.

* * *

**-xviii. dead of night**

Manami watches from her father's grip, slung over his shoulder as he sprints through the trees. Kaa-san is right behind them, knives flashing silver in the moonlight as her arms move in lightning-quick arcs, screaming past at breakneck speed to pierce flesh and rend bone. Tou-san flies with the wind underneath her, muscles tense, swords strapped to his body and his daughter over his shoulder like a small red-headed bag of rice. The gales fly by, howling in her ears as her father holds her tighter and _runs_.

Blood seeps from the skin of her palms, staining her fingernails red where they dig into flesh, leaving half-moon cuts to match the arcing sliver of light hanging in the star-studded blackness. Manami barely notices, too caught up watching and holding on and overwhelmed with sight and sound and _fear_. She can only see silhouettes in the darkness, outlined by the pale glow of the moon, rippling under the leaves, dancing through the trees near soundlessly in pursuit, but they're dangerously real and solid. Steel screeches and Kaa-san's kunai sing in a crimson symphony, slicing through foes as if through water. Hands crackle with lightning and fire and water, but they're easily dodged and deflected; one strays and hits Tou-san's other shoulder, but he shrugs off the blow easily and doesn't lose a step.

Some fall under Kaa-san's kunai and tags, dropping to the forest floor like flies as she throws with pinpoint accuracy to lance through arteries and imbed ticking bombs into bodies, but more come and keep charging with jutsus and weapons to lay their protests to rest. Somehow, the endless supply of tagged silver steel runs out, and Kaa-san grits her teeth, activates her seals and flings herself forward to slit their throats hands-on, a demon cloaked in blood-spattered silk and glowing tendrils of chakra lashing out from her back. Tou-san makes no move to engage the enemy, only runs and runs with Manami in his steady arms and a sword at his side, without a trace of weariness or fatigue, his heartbeat fast and stuttering where Manami can feel his pulse through his neck.

(Kaa-chan has told her daughter of her flight to Uzushio, her adolescence spent on the island, apprenticed to a master who taught her the art of _fuuinjutsu_ and of its more practical uses. And before that, in secret, coercing chakra usage and knife-throwing lessons out of her shinobi bodyguard, a tall dark-eyed figure who wielded her short blades like extensions of her being and slipped into shadows like a fish into water.

Yamamoto Chie's sheer drive and capability is terrifying; especially in her youth.)

She catches up, and they flee into the autumn night, leaving a trail of bodies and a whisper of wind, neither one of Manami's parents looking back. The fact that the ninja have found them only speaks of how wide their cover has been blown, and the idyll and halcyon days of the little green valley are now gone, lost in the wind of their escape.

Midoritani will be fine (at least as fine as any town will be after the war); Iwa holds no grudge against neutral civilians, not when they can be of use. But Yamamoto Chie, though estranged, is the fire daimyo's daughter; Uzumaki Katashi is a remnant of a powerful clan long thought wiped out; and Manami, small and delicate and only five years old, is their flesh and blood. None of them have any desire to become prisoners of war.

By now, the charges in the explosive tags have gone off, setting the house aflame and wiping away any trace that could be used to track them.

Manami lies cradled in the solid embrace of her father's arms, and does not speak. She can only offer a silent, worthless farewell to the life she once knew.

* * *

**-xix. after**

"Tou-chan, kaa-chan," Manami says quietly, "Why'd the ninja come for us?"

It is but a day later, and Manami's family has crossed the border into unfamiliar territory. Gone are the rolling hills and fields of Midoritani, and the dense forest of Kusa no Kuni - now plains sprawl endlessly over the landscape, green grasses swaying in the wind, dusty roads winding in between. The air is warmer, untouched by the chill of the coming winter, and the village they finally stop to rest in is small and suspicious. Outside the window of the guest room of the inn, the silver curve of the moon hangs in the darkness, clouds sprawled across the sky and crickets chirping in the tall grass. Manami does not doubt that they will be gone by the next dawn.

Katashi looks troubled, dark shadows under his weary face. He drags a rough hand over his brow, and sighs, reaching out to gently lift Manami into his lap. Chie comes around and wraps her arms around them both, leans her head against her husband's; her eyes are still dark, dried red lurking underneath her perfect fingernails. Manami rests her head against the solid planes of his chest and breathes in her father's scent, still faintly tinged with echoes of the sea.

"Nami, your tou-chan's got a lot of enemies." he says finally, words soft. "So does your kaa-chan. To protect the people we loved, we had to do a lot of bad things to keep them safe."

"Like killing people?" Manami says, blandly.

Katashi looks startled for a brief moment, then he sighs heavily. "Yeah. Some people don't like that, so they want to kill us, too. And because we carry a lot of information that they want."

Chie presses a kiss to the top of Manami's head and lays a gentle palm on her back, tracing lines of ink on skin. "Like the seals we gave you, Nami. The marks are made to protect you, and it's because of what we know that we were able to make them for you."

"If only we could keep everyone safe that way." Katashi murmurs, chakra tinged with melancholy and grief and tasting so strongly of regret. Manami traces the jagged scar stretching across his heart with soft fingers and thinks of a village hidden in the eddies, burned and its people scattered to the winds.

(It nearly bisects his torso. Her father has never told her just how he got this particular scar.)

Manami speaks, voice raspy. She needs a glass of water. "Where are we gonna go now?"

"We have a relative. Alive in Konohagakure." He breathes the words softly, hope only for his wife and daughter to hear. "If the war hasn't killed her yet. I was never that close to Kushina-hime before she left, but she's family. If she's still there, she'll take us in." Chie looks unsurprised, and Manami simply nods and tugs her parents closer. Living in Midoritani was fine in peacetime, but now a shinobi village will be the only place truly fortified enough to protect from the war that's coming.

She does not ask if they're ever going to return. She already knows the answer.

* * *

**-xix. wander**

Prideful though he is, Katashi does not hesitate to lay on a henge to mask himself, darkening the hue of his eyes so they're as warm as his wife's and changing the vibrant fire-red of his hair to the deep black of ashes. Chie wears her own illusion well, blunting the regal lines of her face, shifting her nose just a little crooked, darkening the alabaster hue of her skin and lightening her black hair so the noble aura she exudes is dimmed. Manami is an unknown, and so she merely needs to continue dying her hair black to continue her facade.

Disguised, they trek and run across endless green-gold plains, the sky above an endless heavenly swathe of blue, ivory clouds moving along at the pace of mountains as Manami clings to her father's back and laughs breathlessly as they run, Chie easily keeping pace beside them and Katashi just as joyful in the exhilarating rush of motion. The scenery changes as the days pass, grasses giving way to a vast sea of trees, outstretched branches filtering the daylight through a veil of emerald, ever-shifting leaves.

They slow as they reach settlements and civilisation instead of the wild, sprawling plains and shaded forests, and take their time to wander the towns instead, Chie walking through the markets and crowds and gathering supplies and information in equal measure. Katashi stays in the inns to keep their steel clean and guard their supplies and exhausted daughter, but when they can they take their daughter out to see the world beyond the small town she grew up in, see the hustle and bustle of Hi no Kuni and hear the smoky accents and fiery behavior and warm colours of its people.

They stop at a festival in Tanzaku Gai, the people there doing their best to carry on with their normal lives in spite of the war threatening to destroy all they know and love. Chie dresses Manami in a child's yukata and Katashi hoists her over his broad shoulders, and for one bright warm night they mingle with the crowds, terrorize the booths and revel in life.

Manami has no shame in the way she happily gorges herself on sweet dripping dango and all manner of fried things on sticks, and the smoke fills her lungs with each breath, a thick, heady sensation that makes her eyes water. Chie tears through the booth games, pinpoint precision picking balls off their perches with ease, and she presents to her husband and daughter two small stuffed animals. Manami gleefully calls the cute white fox and cradles it gingerly with sticky hands, while Katashi is content with the fluffy koi fish. They slip away from the festivities with a sleepy daughter in tow, already on the way to the next settlement. No-one notices them leave in the throng.

Thrice they come across bandits in the rolling Fire plains, and once a nuke-nin among the green trees with water ninjutsu at his fingertips.

They leave the bandits alive, if barely. For the nuke-nin, they leave nothing behind but blood spatter and ashes, Chie pocketing her red-stained knives and Katashi gently tucking Manami into his chest and the small family continuing on their way with a whisper of wind and dust in their wake.

Four days pass.

* * *

**-xx. rest**

They stop at a pristine lake to rest momentarily, emerald forest surrounding the clearing of the lake, trees gathered at the edges and branches outstretched over the crystal clear waters. Tou-chan immediately flings off his clothes to dive into the water like he's coming home. Being surrounded by your element usually helps with regenerating chakra and just giving comfort - it's why Katashi looks so at home in the heat of his forge and Chie so alive in the blustery winds that swoop through Midoritani. It's familiar and welcoming and just...right, in ways Manami can't properly express. She would really like to join him, but they're not supposed to stop for very long, and if she goes in she's not sure if she'll be able to drag herself out, so she stays sat next to her mother with the waves lapping at her bare dirt-scuffed feet, washing them clean and filling her with a sense of contentment.

Curiosity overtakes her as she gives herself time to contemplate recent events, and she turns to the woman sitting next to her to ask. "Kaa-chan, how d'you do the thing with your back?"

Kaa-chan, perched comfortably on a rock jutting out of the water, watches Tou-chan with bright eyes as he breaks the rippling surface with a joyful whoop, water clinging to him like a second skin and noonlight cascading off him in shimmering rivulets as he jumps and reenters the lake seamlessly, waves rushing out from where he dances in the embrace of the water. Then she turns, long strands of dark hair swaying gently in the breeze to frame her warm brown eyes, and registers the question.

"What do you mean, Nami?"

Manami makes an expressive, wavy motion with her hands. "The tentacle thingy. When you were fightin' the ninja when we were 'scapin."

"Ah, you mean the chakra tendrils?" Kaa-chan smiles. "That was my inheritance from my master, Same-shishou. With some assistance from Nanami-san. Remember, your great-aunt and grandmother?"

Manami blinks, and dredges up the memory of sitting comfortably in Kaa-chan's lap, Tou-chan's arms wrapped around them both, as they reminisced about two of the finest sealmasters and kunoichi Uzushiogakure had ever had the honour of giving rise to.

_(Uzumaki Sameko was born just in time to be able to fight as a child soldier in the First Shinobi World War, and on the bloody battlefields was where she honed her blades and made a name for herself. Teeth filed down to sharp points as befitting her name, she tore out throats and ripped apart foes with silver knives and writhing tendrils of chakra that pulverised flesh and bone, vicious and ruthless and beautiful in her savagery._

_With the end of the war, Sameko lost an arm, gained a little sister and found she rather liked the taste of peace; so she refined her fuuinjutsu skills and the seals that had given her infamy in war so as to be more nonviolent, and taught them to her charge, Uzumaki Nanami. Nanami then went on to marry a sweet stablehand and gave birth to a son, whom she named Katashi. When Chie found her way to Uzushiogakure years later and demanded that the legendary Beast of the Whirlpool teach her fuuinjutsu, she met her nephew, a blacksmith's apprentice, and the rest was history._

_They had stayed and fought till the very end.)_

Chie's eyes soften with melancholy. "They were two of the greatest women I've ever known, may their souls ride with the tide." She murmurs quietly, a prayer for the dead. "The chakra tendrils are a seal Same-shishou developed during the First War, then made more mundanely useful during peacetime, to compensate for her lost arm. They're basically semi-solid chakra constructs that can be used offensively, defensively and in ordinary life, and give you more range and flexibility. You need very good chakra control to be able to use them, but the seals make it a little easier to form the tendrils."

Manami can appreciate how her parents treat her affectionately but never like she's any less intelligent than them. It makes learning easier and makes her feel warm and happy inside. "Show me?"

Kaa-chan chuckles and gathers her daughter in her lap, kissing her black-dyed head tenderly and murmuring lowly. "Not out here, Nami. Somewhere safer. I can show you the seal itself later, but using the tendrils might draw attention."

Damn it, she really wants to see that technique, it's so cool. "Bu' you never showed me it _b'fore_. An' Tou-chan's bein' extra loud already," Manami pouts, pointing at the man gleefully swimming laps across the lake, stirring up a stray flock of ducks.

Laughter ripples through her mother's chest. "That's true, and I'm sorry I never got the chance to show Same-shishou's work to you before, but if I used the seals, I'd obviously be a ninja. Your tou-chan just looks like a crazy man."

A mock offended yell resounds from where the aforementioned man is making his way back to his family, making languid movements to cut through the water. "I _heard_ that, Chi-chan!"

"Then you know it's true," Kaa-chan fires back, clear soprano voice carrying a teasing lilt. "Only idiots jump into the raging surf in the middle of a monsoon storm, Tashi!"

"The best waves come during storms, and any Uzu kid worth their salt knows how to ride the riptide," Tou-chan grins. "It builds character!"

Kaa-chan gives a scoff, still smiling. "You seaborn brats and your surfing obsessions."

"Guilty as charged," he laughs, pulling himself up on an adjacent rock, water dripping from his henge-dark hair and running down his chest and through his scars like channels for a stream. Even under an illusion, his eyes are brilliant as the blazing sun overhead, sunlight filtering through the leaves of the trees overhead and refracting in the pools of his eyes. He leans over and kisses his wife, then smacks a wet kiss on Manami's head, against her giggling protests. "Aw, Nami-chan, you don't wanna swim?"

"Thought we're only stoppin' f'r a while," the girl tilts her head, chakra already humming at the chance to immerse herself in the waters. Her shoes are already off, neatly placed on the bank of the lake, and it'll only take her thirty seconds tops to strip down to her shorts...

Kaa-chan looks amused. "Addicts, both of you. Well, we seem to be alone, so we do have enough time if you promise to keep it short." Manami lets out a jubilant cheer and immediately begins wriggling out of her shirt.

Tou-chan beams, radiant. "I _knew_ there was a reason I married you."

"I thought it was because your mother was dropping unsubtle comments about grandchildren."

Tou-chan lays another wet kiss on Manami's cheek. "And is she not the most precious and perfect child that we could have asked for?"

Inkstained fingers undo the small braid of her hair, a smile pressed against the back of her head. "Yes, she is."

* * *

**_AN:_**

_TheParadoxicalOxymoron: Yeah, Kagome Kagome and Kakurenbo in particular can be so so creepy *shudders* I swear I won't kill the kids just yet! THEY'LL BE OKAY FOR A WHILE LONGER._

_thousandyearflower: FLOWER DID YOU KNOW ALL OF YOUR IDEAS ARE FUCKING GOLD HOLY SHIT. I'm probably not gonna get far enough in this fic to toy with the Naruto world developing technology, but maybe some steampunk stuff might come in. Ya never know! DON'T CHANGE YOUR STUFF BC OF MINE, YOURS IS GREAT. Hahaha Manami doesn't get to grow in Midoritani for long, lmao. _

_sonyat: Bless your face for your compliments ahhhhh. The happiness starts to crumble here. Manami will hopefully not be too OP, but the track I have her on will definitely lead to yet another Uzumaki fuinjutsu powerhouse (OUO) I considered removing the part I ripped from Silver Queen, but I feel I might as well leave it in to flesh the fuinjutsu in this story._

_ajwehri: Not quite a year this time!_

_afterados: Bless ur face too friend. (U3U) God bless all of your compliments! Thanks for reading this fic and loving it so much! Haha, enjoy Katashi and Chie while you can (OWO)_

_Pinksakura200: I worry about my update schedule too, friend._

_Sorugao-BandGeek: THIS IS THE FIRST TIME SOMEONE HAS CALLED MY WRITING CUTE BLESS YOU. I find drabble-writing much less hassle and stress than trying to churn out big-ass chapters like I tried to do for Rising Sun. I'm glad you find all my babies memorable! ENJOY THE PARENTS WHILE YOU CAN. (OWO)_

_AliceSekai: NO PROMISES (OUO). _

_Guest: Thank you!_

**_NEXT CHAPTER:_**

The red-haired girl stares, wide-eyed. "You...Katashi-nii? "

The man cracks a smile. "The 'nii-san' title isn't special when you call all the older boys that, Kushina-hime."


	4. we're safe and sound

_AN: Happy new year, everyone! Haven't got all that much this time around, but next chapter is a big one, believe me. _

* * *

**-xxi. a beginning**

On the morning of the tenth day, as the sun rises over the horizon, golden sunlight filtering in through the leaves to scatter dappled shadows on the forest floor, Uzumaki Katashi and Yamamoto Chie shed their henges and stride into the Hashirama Forest, Manami riding on Katashi's shoulders. The birds chirp overhead, singing merrily with the bugs; the trees loom overhead like titans, countless leaves blotting out the early morning sky. Manami clings to her father's shoulders and lets her warbling, too-high voice join the rich tones of her father and mother, singing old songs of Uzushio and other far-flung places to pass the time, and distract her from thinking about the million different ways this might go wrong, all the details and little things she might accidentally change just by existing in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

It's barely ten minutes into their walk before an animal-masked figure blurs out of the trees before them. The bird mask stares at them impassively, short sword at the figure's side.

"State your business."

Chie bows and speaks for them, her soprano tones carrying the weight of authority. "I am Yamamoto Chie; this is my husband, Uzumaki Katashi, and our daughter, Uzumaki Manami. We seek refuge in Konohagakure."

The ANBU stays still for a brief moment, then inclines their head. "Follow me."

Down the winding path into the endless woods, they follow.

* * *

**-xxii. summons**

Kushina is eating ramen with Mikoto-chan when the hawk drops soundlessly out of the sky with a message in its beak. Old man Teuchi gives a short start at the sight of the bird of prey abruptly diving into his establishment, and Mikoto blinks as the animal goes straight for her red-haired friend, dropping a message neatly next to her bowl of ramen and leaving as quickly as it came.

Something plummets in Kushina's gut - painted hawks are straight from the Hokage, the red band of the scroll screaming _urgent_, _read and carry out order immediately_ \- and she prays it's nothing to do with the beast sealed in her belly.

"Sorry, Koto-chan, I have to take this, I'll see you same time tomorrow for lunch-" she says to her wide-eyed friend, hastily leaving enough ryo to cover for her six bowls, snatching up the missive and disappearing in a swirl of leaves.

She reappears on a nearby rooftop, barely a strand of red hair out of place, and quickly checks around to make sure she's alone. The canopy of the urban forest of Konohagakure is usually a favorite route for ninja to pass through, but it seems for now there's no one in her immediate vicinity, so she quickly unrolls the scroll with sharp eyes, reading through the jonin-level code the message is inscribed in.

Her eyes widen, heartbeat accelerating, breath suddenly caught in her lungs. After all this time…?

She stuffs the scroll in her pocket, focuses her chakra, and _pulls_.

Shunshin is one of the most exhilarating jutsu to learn - essentially, it charges the user's entire body up with chakra and springs them across a distance in a burst of pure speed, making them seemingly reappear instantaneously in another spot like nothing has happened. Consequently, this means the user's senses are all blinded in that moment, making it a rather inadvisable jutsu to utilise in combat (unless you're trying to escape), but there's nothing like the firework of pure breathless adrenaline that floods your body when using it. The thrill shoots through your veins and shakes your bones, leaving first-timers windswept and drunk on the sensation.

She blinks onto the rooftop of the weapons shop, several blocks away, the Hokage Tower looming tall and strong in the distance, focuses and slips back into that trancelike state -

-_blink_, closer, T&amp;I in sight-

-_blink, _space rippling around her, parting for her like the wind carving through the fields of Hi no Kuni-

_-blink, _and as the leaves swirl around her she blinks open violet eyes to see the Sandaime Hokage, looking old and grim as ever in this time of war.

She collects herself and bows quickly. "I came as fast as I could. So there's really -"

The Sandaime nods. "We have reason to believe so, yes, and the two adults have the tattoos. It would be easier if you could identify them, actually. Follow me."

* * *

**-xxiii. reunion**

The red-haired girl stares, wide-eyed. "You...Katashi-nii?"

The man cracks a smile. "The 'nii-san' title isn't special when you call all the older boys that, Kushina-hime." He pulls up a sleeve and pushes chakra through his bare arm, a spiral symbol flaring blue on his bicep. "Once there was a maiden who sought knowledge."

The girl's voice trembles slightly. "With her words she laid a dragon to rest and raised a nation."

The man nods, eyes watery and smiling. "Hunger is the mother of change."

A blur of red, and suddenly the girl is clutching the older man in a bear hug, face buried in the crook of his neck, the man quick to return the favour as her buckling knees drag him with her to sink down onto the cold stone floor. For a moment, they sit there, wrapped up in relief at having another of their clan back with the other, blood and family and loneliness binding them.

Then Kushina leans back and punches him in the gut.

"Where the fuck have you _been_," she half-shrieks, furious and elated all at once, violet eyes shimmering wetly in the electric lights. "Uzushio fell and we were caught up fighting everyone else and they had you guys barricaded away and I thought I was the only one _left_-" her voice catches on a sob, tears threatening to spill.

To his credit, Katashi barely flinches from the blow, gaze softening. He reaches an arm out to pull his younger cousin close, patting her like he used to whenever the younger kids got overwhelmed with emotion. "Hiding out from our enemies, brat. You thought they were able to wipe all of us out? Please." His voice comes out choked up, heavy with raw emotion.

The girl wipes her teary eyes. "Then how the hell did you get out alive?"

He cradles her cheek with a rough palm, wiping her tears away with his thumb. "We were running a recon mission out in Hi no Kuni when we got word of Uzushio," Katashi says softly. "There was nothing left when we ventured back there, but we managed to recover three of the scroll bunkers and bring them along. After that, we decided to go lay low for a while, and we ended up in a little town in Kusa no Kuni. We went deep-cover for several years, laying low and keeping an ear out for any news, seeing if there were any Uzumaki wandering, and we found a few who ran off to places as far as Tetsu no Kuni. But we stayed put until the war came to our doorstep, and then we ran. And now, here we are. Iwagakure's after us, by the way."

Kushina snorts, cheeks wet and a smile pulling at her lips. "You sure had a fun time while you were gone, huh?"

"I could say the same for you, hime." Katashi says, looking amused, "Bloody Habanero, huh?"

Kushina raises a challenging brow. "Somethin' you wanna insinuate, Katashi?"

"No," he replies, smile quirking at his lips, "Just that you took more cues from Same-ba than I thought. You've been doing okay, right?" he continues in a gentler tone.

"As good as anyone can be, fighting a war," she says, the smile quirking her lips not reaching her eyes. Her bright violet eyes are dark and Katashi notes with careful eyes the myriad of scars scattered across what skin he can see, shallow channels where kunai sliced through; nicks and scratches negligible enough for the medic-nin to ignore in favour of more critical wounds. The shadows pooling under her eyes. The Uzumaki princess has seen war, he notes, sadly, and her kin were not around to help her through her burden.

(The knowledge that Mito-sama was the jinchuuriki of the Kyuubi had never been a secret among the Uzumaki - only a reason to respect her even more for the weight of the burden she bore willingly. The Uzumaki had taken on their name after laying a dragon to rest - what was a mere fox to a beast of endless, raging seas?

And on long, sleepless nights far from the crashing waves of his ruined home, Katashi had thought of the daughter of the clan head, sent away to train and learn from the oldest and wisest of their clan, and knew this: in the absence of any other Uzumaki in the Hidden Leaf, their princess would have been the only option to host the Kyuubi in her stead after the matriarch's death. To take on the burden of containing a nine-tailed force of nature within her body, alone in a land far from salt and sea and kin.)

Katashi's smile is sad. "Our precious Ryuuhime, fighting a war? Whatever happened to the brat who had the bravado to dive to the depths of Ryujin's Gorge just to spite her father?"

"She saw her clan fall and could do nothing," Kushina says quietly. Katashi pulls her into another hug. His chest feels tight.

"C'mon, hime. We'll catch up properly later." he murmurs, pulling her to her feet. "Come and meet your family."

* * *

**-xxiv. family**

When Tou-san returns, it is with a startlingly familiar woman in tow. Manami has to blink and resist the urge to giggle in absolute glee, because Uzumaki Kushina is here in the flesh before her. Mother of the saviour of the world, the Bloody Habanero, scion and princess of a clan born anew in the churning surf and the blood of a dragon. The anime nor manga did nothing to capture just how stunning the woman is in the flesh. From the flame-red tones of her long, long hair, to the brightness of her violet eyes, to the sheer radiance of the grin on her face (unmarred by the dampness on her cheeks), everything about Kushina is absolutely dazzling. Manami stares, wide-eyed, and drinks in the sight of the first other Uzumaki she's seen besides her father. She's so _young, _too - from her youthful flush to the shape of her face, she can't be older than sixteen.

Manami stifles an elated giggle to glance at her parents, and her heart swells and breaks to at the looks on their faces. Tou-chan's cheeks are streaked with glimmering wet tracks, but his smile consumes his face. Kaa-chan's eyes are wide with an emotion Manami can't quite place,

"Chie-nee," Kushina says, eyes wet, and pulls the woman into a tight hug, burying her face in the crook of her shoulder. Gently, her mother pats the girl's head with trembling, ink-stained fingers, like she does when Manami wakes up after a nightmare, pressing her lips against blood-red waves of hair softly, as if she's afraid they'll vanish before her eyes.

The collar of Kaa-chan's top is stained wet when the girl pulls back, teary-eyed but with a trembling smile. "You're _alive_," she breathes, eyes wet at the face of a daughter not born of Uzushio but who was welcomed into their home as one of their own; who had babysat the clan princess many a stormy afternoon when the little girl's curiosity tugged at her to watch the sealmasters at work; who had fallen in love so fiercely with the blacksmith nephew of her teacher that it had brought a cheer to the whole clan when the two finally confessed; who had shed tears and sweat and blood and fought for her art, for her family, for her village, for the land of whirlpools and mercurial seas and the dragonblood clan that she claimed as her own.

"Hello, Ryuuhime," Chie smiles, dark eyes shining with unshed tears. "It's good to see you."

"It's good to see you too," Kushina sniffles, cracking a shaking, brilliant smile as she reluctantly pulls away. Violet eyes tear away from Kaa-chan's face and lock upon the tiny red head of hair peering curiously up at her. Manami stares into her cousin's eyes, shimmering like there's an ocean in her irises. This is the woman who will one day bring this world's messiah into the world, the second to carry the burden of the Kyuubi in her belly. Her family.

Kushina stares, speechless and drinking in the sight of red hair not her own, eyes as blue as the crashing waves surrounding the ruins of Uzushio. Chie chuckles wetly, and nudges Manami with a gentle hand. "Say hello to your big sis, Nami."

"H-hi," Manami mumbles, tongue tripping over itself in excitement and apprehension and _this woman is going to help change the world, _suddenly faced with the truth that the stories and characters she saw in another lifetime weren't just fantasies she dreamed up in this one, that a legend in the flesh was standing in front of her, cheeks flushed and eyes wet from crying, still young and alive and so breathlessly real. "M' name's Manami." she manages to get out, reminding herself to smile through the maelstrom of heady emotions in her heart.

Kushina breaks into a tender, brilliant smile. "Ryujin's bones, she's the spitting image of both of you," she says softly, her hands coming up to reverently cradle the curve of her face. "Hair like Same-baa's, eyes like Katashi-nii's, and her cheekbones are all you." The teenage Uzumaki beams at the little girl with the smile of someone who had almost given up on hoping. "Hi there, Nami-chan. I'm your big sis Kushina. You and your kaa-chan and tou-chan are gonna live with me from now on."

Manami's heart overflows at the fragile hope and joy in her voice. "Can I call you Kushina-nee-chan?"

The teenage kunoichi grins and trembles a little, tears leaking out of the corners of her eyes as she scrubs at them. "Yeah," she says, hoarsely, full of bittersweet memories of calling older boys and girls with fire-hair and laughing smiles by that same honorific and being called the same by bright-eyed and rosy-faced brats, all of the adolescents of the clan her big brothers and sisters and all of the younglings her little siblings to protect and guide and tease and love. The names are all naught but ash on her tongue; but now this little girl with rust-red hair and big blue eyes, calling her what she'd called and been called by a hundred others before. "Yeah, of course you can, _imouto. _O-of course."

A tiny, shuddering gasp escapes her lips, and the dam breaks.

"I _m-missed-_" she hiccups, sobs like laughter spilling from her lips, and Kaa-chan and Tou-chan both engulf her in a tight embrace as she breaks down into stuttering wails. Manami feels a little left out, so she squeezes in between too-tall legs and wraps her short little five-year old arms around her newfound kin's waist; breathes in the scent of family, the faint scent of sea air that still clings to her, mixed with the smell of forest and earth and iron. "_M-miss-ed you_," Kushina gets out, crying in earnest, bringing shaky hands up to hold her kin in her arms. "_Miss-missed a-all of y-you, st-still mi-iss th-th-them-_" Sobs tear their way out of her throat, a raw wound reopened at the sight of loved ones thought dead, the memory of being trapped across a continent and helpless against the destruction of her home dredged back to the surface.

Kaa-chan smiles, tears running free in rivulets down her face, murmuring soothings and words bottled up for years, regret and joy and grief in her eyes and the words she speaks; Tou-chan's apologies are a trembling bass rumble, throat choked up and clogged with thick, raw feeling. Manami only silently clings tight to her newfound kin's waist as emotions buried since Uzushio's fall are dragged back up and set free, and basks in the glow of their collective emotional catharsis.

* * *

_AN: Our first taste of actual canon characters! About time. Don't worry, after this we plunge straight into introducing the new Uzumakis to the rest of the village._

_TheParadoxicalOxymoron: Chie and Katashi are way too cool to let a few Rock ninja keep em down. A-LEVELS ARE FUCKING SCARY but thank you for your kind words friend. 3 Murder fest ain't incoming for a while more, don't worry! We stil l have more set-up chapters before we get to that..._

_JBebe: The family has been reunited! Thank you for your kind words :)_

_Vaeius: This is possibly the best response I could have gotten in terms of the worldbuilding. Thank you._

_Enbi: I love how nearly every review on last chapter was begging me to not kill the parents off. Yeah, last chapter was a real Things Happening chapter, wasn't it? Don't worry, next chapter is a lot of Manami, Chie and Katashi getting settled into their new home and meeting some younger, but very familiar faces. And now you'll get to see exactly where in the timeline we are!_

_schoolgirl, collegegirl: Thanks for the reviews! Yeah, Manami's particular skillset is leading up to something a little different from your average kunoichi._

_ShugoYuuki123: Thank you!_

_kalmaegi: Thank you! I've been working on so much Uzumaki and Uzushio worldbuilding it's actually kind of ridiculous. I'm glad you like the dragonchildren backstory for the Uzumaki! _

_Arashi IV of VI: UZUMAKI KUSHINA IS IN THE HOUSE, BABY_

_mylongodetosleep: I'm actually pretty proud of that line, lmao. Thank you!_

_Iphigelina: we'll see (OWO) (OWO) (OWO)_

_sonyat: AHHHH GOD BLESS YOU WOMAN. Haha, you already know the answer to your plea. (OWO) KUSHINA TIME IS HERE AND IT AIN'T GOING AWAY FOR A GOOD LONG TIME_

_yuumuki: Thank you!_

_afterados: OH MY GOD MAN THIS REVIEW IM SCREAMING THANK YOU! Bless your face. I love writing slang and colloquial dialogue and accents - it really adds that flavour of diversity to character speech that you can't get as easily without audio input. AUGH IM ROLLING AROUND THANK YOU FOR NOTICING MANAMI'S LITTLE MOMENTS. She's a rather quiet character, but she's got a perfectionist streak a mile wide and hates losing to anything, and while she is mature she also loves indulging her childish side._

_risao: I updated!_

_JackFrost14: :)_

_amgs: I kind of dislike the trait of some SI OC fics where they never truly accept their new parents as their birth parents, but for many it's entirely understandable. Here though, Chie and Katashi and wonderful parents and Manami is just basking in their love. Thank you for this review 3_

_ARandomPerson: All of you guys begging to keep Katashi and Chie alive and I'm here just giggling madly like a loon. Thank you!_

_Crack-jouchan: I ACTUALLY ONLY NOTICED TANIGAKURE WAS AN ACTUAL VILLAGE UNTIL YOU POINTED IT OUT. Shit. um. Handwave with brats not knowing obscure foreign secret ninja villages I guess!_

_**NEXT CHAPTER:** _

Kakashi had hoped it would just be a normal lunch with Minato and Kushina, where the two danced awkwardly around the topic of their mutual crushes and Kakashi sat in between them and ate his ramen, but when they arrive at Ichiraku's there's a girl his age with rust-red hair seated at the Uzumaki's side, looking up at her with an expression of elated awe on her face.


End file.
